This latest work is populated with individuals seeking new beginnings, trying to break free from addictions or harmful partnerships, only to see hope turn into conflict. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "fresh start", making it willfully cynical through recurring use. Examples include "He aimed to start over" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the narrative. Meanwhile, she seems to be making her personal new beginning, since this appears a different type of work – documentarian, truly literary. However it reveals itself to be filled with the same dilemmas and styles as earlier books.
From Chance Novelist to Renowned Book
The writer was originally an artist who transitioned to writing somewhat by chance with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, converting intimate women's literature from abjection into rebellion. She continued writing, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels missed the power and directness that the epistolary style imparted to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a maverick maker who had evolved into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on housing investments. It makes sense that she currently desires to experiment with new kinds of material, looking outwards to external narratives, at a time when she states that current political era renders personal narrative unnecessary.
Three Generations, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, encompassing three generations – each trapped by their pasts. We encounter the tale of Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, moving from the New York borough to rural Connecticut. Then there is the account of Kraus, in the character of protagonist Catt Greene, reckoning with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband her husband Paul. Finally the story of the murder of one lost young man by another in a town largely deserted by liberal ideals only 80 miles from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.
From my perspective as a reader drawn to polished prose of the type Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the literary tone of the initial segment.
As a reader who favors honed writing of the style that the author often disregards, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the initial part. There is a novel degree of detail that accommodates small details, like the pail that the protagonist as a child dislodges from ice at the opening of the book, aided by her beloved father. "Look, an ice toy!" she declares; "a great plaything", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not hers, exactly."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this different style could persist to the end. The author states here that she is annoyed by the pleasure those who appreciate polished prose have derived from I Love Dick; she's committed to disruption, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her hero author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her past books returns in the middle section. Catt is attempting to do up three dozen dilapidated units in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unable to aid Paul curb his addiction. She experiences powerlessness as her spouse transitions between underfunded jobs as an substance abuse counselor in a environment fueled by the hostility and dread that underpins Trump's victory. A significant portion discusses about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her occupation changed from "novelist" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. She still gives the impression to be overly concerned about this. In a moment she remarks that she's looking into the killing so that before exiting the region, "she could potentially understand something about an the nation that her online critics would not understand, would not even see".
The Homicide Account
So then we come to the homicide in question – and the referenced day experienced by the victim with the murderer and his associates. Kraus has compelling foundational content, and details moment by moment what happened when the victim Brandon came to see Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied the day in the company of her associates, mooching around having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's boyfriend a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has repeatedly received inpatient care for violent rage.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt gets obsessed by the story, and I found myself captivated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards ethical reporting and daring boundary-pushing tussle in this section. However, I would have preferred her to explore more thoroughly her own obsessions here. The compelling persona is Brittney, who becomes vivid partly through Catt's identification with her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in prison, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
